If you can’t recall the last time you looked closely at your FEGLI plan, or if you’re not even sure what that stands for, you may not be in the minority of federal employees. That’s because FEGLI, or Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance, isn’t the most exciting item on the federal benefits menu, and nobody much relishes the thought of what happens to their family if they should die unexpectedly.

Long-term care is even easier to push down the list as a problem for some distant version of yourself who is presumably much older and has plenty of money saved up, with everything figured out.

But here’s the problem with treating your life insurance or long-term care elections as decisions you make once in a lifetime. Your life has and will change—a lot—over the course of your federal career. Your financial risks will also change, which means your insurance needs will change, too, whether you account for them or not.

On the latest episode of Fed Thread, I talked with Thiago Glieger, partner and private wealth advisor at RMG Advisors, about why federal employees should periodically pull these policies out of the literal or figurative drawer and take another look.

The right amount of life insurance isn’t necessarily a magic multiple of your salary, Glieger explains. He suggests starting with a more useful (albeit uncomfortable) question: What financial hole would I leave behind if I died too soon?

For a younger federal employee, that could include decades of future income, a mortgage, children’s college costs and retirement savings never to be realized. For someone approaching retirement, the equation looks different. A spouse may still depend on that income or on a FERS pension, and a survivor benefit can be substantially less than the pension the employee was receiving.

The point isn’t that everyone needs more insurance. Sometimes quite the opposite, it’s that the number you needed 20 years ago may not be the number you need today. And being either over- or under-insured is unideal.

There’s another reason not to put FEGLI on autopilot. The cost of some coverage changes as you get older. Glieger walks through what that can look like for someone using FEGLI Option B multiples. Coverage that may seem relatively inexpensive earlier in a career can balloon later on.

That’s where the tradeoff gets interesting. Every dollar going toward insurance is a dollar that can’t go toward something else, be it your TSP, a college fund, paying down debt or another financial priority. Peace of mind from being over-insured becomes a missed opportunity cost or even a liability elsewhere.

That doesn’t mean you should automatically drop coverage. In fact, Glieger’s advice is more nuanced. Think of FEGLI as one tool, and consider whether private insurance might make sense as another layer, he suggests.

Life insurance protects the people you leave behind, but long-term care insurance covers another unexpected problem: if you continue to live, but at a tremendous cost of care.

Health insurance isn’t designed to cover every expense associated with needing ongoing assistance, memory care, assisted living or other long-term support. Medicare doesn’t necessarily fill that gap either. The result can be a particularly painful scenario in retirement, where feds spend decades saving to achieve financial independence, only to see that independence threatened by years of expensive care.

And unlike some financial decisions, warns Glieger, this is one where waiting can reduce your options.

None of this means you need to become an insurance expert overnight. Rather, Glieger’s advice is to simply model the possibilities. Think through what happens if you or your spouse dies early, if long-term care enters the picture, or if several bad financial events happen all at once. Then ask yourself if the plan you chose years ago is still doing the job you need it to do.

Your benefits are tools, says Glieger. They should be taken down from the shelf periodically, dusted off and re-evaluated for how well they’re serving your latest version of life, wherever it’s taken you. Set-it-and-forget-it may be convenient, but it isn’t a financial plan.

Don’t miss this episode, because not knowing can cost you—and the ones you love—after you’re gone.

Catch more conversations on podcast platforms, YouTube or on the Fed Thread hub page.

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